I feel happiest with myself when...

...I go to bed with ink-stained fingers. With studying comes many brilliant things: interesting ideas, thought-provoking words, brain-expanding.

But, for me at least, it also causes a lingering feeling of guilt: I always feel like I should be doing so much more, more, more than I do already. These fingers are proof that I've actually worked hard during the day and, phew, I can relax.

Either that, or they prove I need to get some new pens...

(I found this little doodle in my journal the other day. I can't draw hands, so most of my drawings are shy.)

♥

I'm reading Sense and Sensibility just now for English. And it is wonderful. Jane Austen has had no small part to play in my ridiculously idealised notion of love, but I do so love her stories. So witty. And beautiful.

doll doppelgänger.

We’ve had this doll for years. A family friend (one of my preschool teachers, ‘Miss Chris’) who used to work in Romania brought it back for us.

She’s lived all over the house (the doll, I mean, not the friend): in the lounge next to photographs, in the sitting room on the bookshelf, in the kitchen on the window ledge (see picture).

A while ago I noticed that she looks an awful lot like...

Margaret Beckett! The politician. Ah ha ha! I just remembered this again today when my brother was watching Question Time. Funny, huh?

...well, okay. Maybe not an 'awful lot'. But she does look a little bit like her, sure she does? There is a faint resemblance, yes? She is vaguely ...Beckett-like?

...maybe it's just me.

(Picture from Google Images.)

out and about.

On the bus the other day I found lots of (Disney Princesses) wrapping paper on the floor. There must have been an on-the-go birthday party earlier that morning. (In one way this is quite cute; in another way, this is technically littering. Come on, people. Bin your rubbish. Recycle it, even. ‘Save the trees, man.’)

I saw this abandoned bear at the bus station today. It looked so sad, with its little bow-tie. Who left him, and why?

My sister and I went out for lunch to the (amazing) Butterfly and the Pig this weekend and halfway through my cheese and tomato toastie I noticed that the stairs above us were decorated with hand and foot prints. My first thoughts were: ‘Cool.' And then: 'That guy must have really big hands. And big feet.’ And then: ‘How on earth did he get his feet up there?’ Did he bounce, head first, on a trampoline? Or did he stand on his head? If so, how tall is this person?? He must be fearsome to behold.

♥

Whoever said that there is no mystery left in the world obviously needs to clean their glasses. I'm off to read some more Romantic poetry (with a capital R) now.

three things.

[one.] the light is lingering longer this week: shining through the slits in the blinds and the bookcases, slipping around the flowers on the windowsill, making patterns on the walls.

[two.] just over a year and a half at university, and I now find it near-impossible to read a book without a pencil in my hand.

[three.] I have the words of this (my Mum's favourite) poem  inside my head today:

♥

Why I Wake Early
by Mary Oliver.

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety—

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light—
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

(Picture from: here.)